In this guest blog, photojournalist Les Monaghan charts the development of his show exploring the realities of life for families in his locality

Almost a year ago, I became agitated by an online news article. Over a million people in the UK were living in destitution. Other people too were agitated by this same article. Spending an hour or so with the online trolls, and their wearied opponents, in the Comment is Free section wasn’t healthy. But it made me realise that no matter how earnest, how scrupulously researched a charity’s report, or campaigning journalist’s article, there are swathes of the UK that refuse to believe ‘news’ they don’t agree with. I knew that within a stone’s throw of where I live I could find families in destitution, and one troll was basically daring me to do it –

27 Apr 2016

Statistics and generalisations again. I wonder if an investigative journalist could seek out one of these families. They could remain anonymous. Their history. Living circumstances. Actual income and income source. Tax paid (if any). From income. Expenditure. This would give a real picture of life today in the UK.

Other posters pointed out the flaws in this proposed approach – it’s too subjective.

As writer Owen Jones notes, the Left spend too much time citing facts, figures, and research, whereas those on the Right frame issues in simplistic, domestically based stories that are easy to absorb, and crucially to repeat. I often use the ‘only 0.7% of benefits is falsely claimed’ statistic – but it cuts little ice versus prurient stories of the benefit cheats. There’s plenty of evidence of the power of storytelling, advertisers are using it all around us, and in a way we know that the news is a story too. So I looked again at my practice to see what I could do to help those who are not represented, filmed or written about but are genuinely suffering.

I planned to spend ten days ‘in residence’ with local families. After then Prime Minister David Cameron crassly tried to move the goalposts when asked about families in poverty at Prime Minister’s Questions the project gained a title: Relative Poverty. This also refers to the inherent privilege of the makers (and readers) of any report or documentary. I intended it to be authored by me and the participants. Relative Poverty would be stories – based in fact, as we understand documentaries to be – and the intent was overt: to show the lives lived in as much detail as it takes to overcome the naysayers.

A tall order I know – the troll cited here can dismiss the empirical substance of an entire Joseph Rowntree Foundation report with a few rapid keystrokes before breakfast. But not all those who voted for the last three governments are trolls. Many simply don’t know what’s going on. How to inform them about ‘news’ that doesn’t fit the mainstream media narrative has meant my re-engagement with ideas from photographer and academic Allan Sekula in the late 1970s. After all, what would be the point of making a series and then trying to get it into the Guardian Weekend magazine only for a troll to dismiss it and 99% of the UK population to not see it? Sekula suggested alternative means:

‘I am not suggesting the mass media can be effectively infiltrated. Mass “communication” is almost entirely subject to the pragmatics of the one-way, authoritarian manipulation of consumer “choices”. I think “marginal” spaces have to be discovered and utilised, spaces where issues can be discussed collectively: union halls, churches, high schools, community colleges, community centers, and perhaps only reluctantly, public museums.’

Relative Poverty began touring all 25 of Doncaster’s libraries from 8 May this year. It will be shown in St John’s church, Balby, South Yorkshire, from July and has just been shown in Sheffield Central Library. The exhibit in libraries will hang above bookshelves for one month in each of Doncaster’s libraries, time enough I hope, to quietly nag away at library users and volunteers. Workshops and talks will take place at each venue, as from experience I know that people want to talk about the issues rather than the art.

The aim is to expand through library and church networks to reach as far as we can. For the last three months I’ve been working with a number of families. The strains of living in destitution have meant that many haven’t been able to face taking part in the project at all. Much of my planned collaborative art pieces haven’t materialised and a great deal of the stories are mediated through documentary photographs and written testimony. Two families are anonymous, in a way they reflect those that couldn’t or wouldn’t take part – what right have we after all to pry? Contemporary society is very big on (instant) judgement and I, as a photographer, am well aware of the power of my medium to steal, lie, and cheat subjects of their dignity and more.

New 13-9-17: A new exhibition of the Relative Poverty Project is on from 14 to 23 September 2017 at Sprotbrough Community Library, South Yorkshire. Artist talk 10am Saturday 23 September.

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You also have an exact and clear idea of how all this affects people who are actually caught up in it. Unfortunately, the people who are responsible for these policies and decisions have never had to deal with it so there is no understanding and no empathy. We are losing our humanity in today's society.

Why would people then bother to make a home and spend money on it? We have to get away from this mindset that has now taken hold that Social Housing.....hate that term, is just temporary to suit your immediate needs. People should not have to up sticks all the time because a child gets older etc. When the old system was in place ie older people with larger homes than they needed they were offered incentives to downsize. In the 90's more Older peoples accommodation was built. Bungalows, Sheltered Housing etc. People were given help with removal costs. This has all changed. To make someone move from a home they have been in for years is cruel if it is not voluntary. I have been in my home since it was built. My daughter moved out as she should when grown up to make her own home. So after 23 years with roots well and truly down, should I be made to move? I have my granddaughter to stay. My daughter's room is now for her and was also an office when I worked from home. I could not fit my home into a small 1 bedroom flat. I do not want people living above me. This idea that if you live in Social Housing it is just accommodation but if you own it is your home is totally wrong. My parents moved willingly into Sheltered Housing but the change affected them drastically. My dad became stressed and ill and died a year later and my mother never settled and died a few years later. This was because they uprooted themselves and left their home and all the memories and familiar surroundings. Unfortunately like most issues these days, the humanity is being taken out of it.

Great resources on linking welfare sanction and conditionally and key social policy considerations with human rights principles (including dignity, non-discrimination). These considerations have a huge impact in narratives around poverty and vulnerability, and should be closely looked at by policy decision-makers and street-level bureaucrats.

Ok. I don’t agree with the bedroom tax but I do feel it would be a better option if housing rules were changed. For example why do they wait until kids are over 10 until giving families two bedrooms?
Then I also think housing should be fit for purpose so I believe when they move someone from a one bedroom to a 2 or 3 it should be with the understanding only until the children grow up and leave home then they should have their Tennancy moved back to something more suitable again like a one bedroom.

A fine well written and clear example of what is broken in our welfare system.
They are asking for submission for the next select committee meeting on welfare and I would submit this post if it were my choice.
It is a vicious cycle for some who have no chance of finding work however hard they might try. It is the employers who ultimately make the decision if employees are fit and ready to work, not the DWP.
Having a budget of £2 per day for food , job searching activities, keeping your appearance and strength up, and having to jump through hoops and tick boxes on all those strength zapping, soul destroying schemes courses and programs that do nothing but heap yet even more pressure and stress.
The affects of stress on both mental and physical health are well documented and nothing can be more stressful than not knowing week in, week out, that your hand to mouth existence is constantly at risk.
Sanctions are death sentences for some, no getting away from that fact, those charged with administrating the regime should hang their heads in shame, it is those who should make the stand to bring about change.
Or do they deceive themselves into believing long time shirker Jim who they sanctioned last month and who has not been seen again at the local JCP, Is now enjoying the fruits of his labor thanks to the Works Coaches helpful push they so desperately needed.
So clearly sanctions work and a good done job done by me, high five everyone.